Deuce

You lookin' at me?

Got any from the flight? Nice. I like the dirty girls at the end.

Use the search function to find everybody who is jumping parachutes loaded 1:1 or lower and call them wussies for not downsizing to elliptical cross-braced 27 cells. That'd be beleivable. And rewrite the "steps to downsize" to read "After getting your A license every jump you make without injury, downsize one parachute size and upgrade to a higher performance parachute starting with a Spectre 210 and proceeding to a Velocity. Soon as you femur, when you get out of the hospital, downgrade one performance grade and upgrade one size. Ass."

Phoey! Phoey? Like rhymes with Joey? You start your Friday night early? Little bit of Shiraz with your Happy Meal? Sorry you won't be there Acme, PHOOEY! (Rhymes with poopee)

Yep, up to halfway. Once you have the focus set up, you can zoom about halfway and then because of the single-element thing with the Stealths/similars, the picture goes fuzzy. Just back the zoom out, and it will come back into focus.

I've got a Diamond 0.3 x and a Stealth 0.5x lens from Royal Lens. Phil Well OK then. On both lenses, set camera to auto in the menu and point the lens at something about 10 feet away. Then press the manual focus set button. Then, if you want, go to the menu and set the sports setting, if you like to use that. I have both of those lenses as well as a prototype .2, and they work great. Hey, Max, if you are out there, the .2 works fine with no fogging issues in the summer heat out here. If there is a significant temperature change and humiditiy present, it fogs a little, just like my Sigma aspherical. Just that big piece of glass, I guess.

That was the one where one of my best friends in the world brought me to the hospital and spent the day with me and my broken ankle. So I don't have any pictures. I know this wonderful woman who has some video, though. -I have been so blessed.

I will always love you, monkey mama! I got my hat in your trailer, and am your monkey son. I'm so sorry Derek isn't skydiving anymore, but I rejoice that I was there on his last skydives. And I committed international felonies for some other monkey brothers that will remain nameless. Ah. My monkey brotherhood. Better than the Masons. Really.

So, no shit, there I was, at the best boogie in the world, and this shot presented itself. Good to be me.

Ah. my Monkey-mama! Lovin you, like in PRISON. And I know all about prison! XO

C'mon! Give me permission to post the anonymous chick at Holiday Boogie 2003's thong! Anonymous!

I got some NOICE! I got some more nice ones of you that are REALLY NOICE but you gotta say OK. Howyoudoin, KatieB? XO One of my favorite monkey pictures of ALL TIME.

No you didn't. Your post about what to wear to a fetish party causes tens of gallons of it to be deposited in shower drains, though. Bad girl. Bad. (Um, Remi, post some pictures. You got WAY too much info to just type it)

Hah! Replying to myself! Ach. I've got a great one of me at Skreamer's house, but I can't find it right now. Chuck Blue? Thanks!

Depends nearly entirely on which wide angle lens you are using. Whatcha got on there?

Your student rental gear will not fit you perfectly, because it is adjustable. We teach look right, grab right (both hands) look left (identify the handle and keep your eyes on it), Pull right (expect things to move around) and move both hands to the left handle and pull left without letting it out of your site. That said, I've had 4 sport reserve rides and 3 tandem reserve rides and I did them all one hand each side. On tandems it really can't be done any other way. BEWARE the internet. Find a competent mentor and discuss everything you have heard here and then listen to your mentor/instructor.

Can I use it to make your household robot UPS me interesting and varied beer from your fridge?

Hey, Rhino, have you considered that maybe the bullets that killed the girl had already travelled through the suspect? When CNN says "high velocity rifle wound" they are probably including the 9mm or .40 MP5's those guys carry. (My old agencies SWAT team carried the 10mm version of the MP5, talk about a chainsaw) Anyhow, they threw a flash-bang in there (I'm guessing) and a team member gets shot and starts screaming like people tend to do when they get shot. The threat has escalated to the point where risking the babies life is acceptable, because lots of other folks are now in a potential to die. It's part of just about every law enforcement oral exam where a suspect is armed needs to be shot, and cops HAVE to have the ability to shoot people. Distilled, the correct answer is "I will shoot at the armed man when the threat he poses to innocent life is greater than the risk I pose shooting at him/her" Follow up question: "But what if he moves at the last moment while you have pulled the trigger and you shoot the child?" However that answer is given tells a lot about the character of the applicant. But they have to eventually take the shot. And the criticism of you and CNN. Tough job.

Tunnel time does not equate with what coaches are supposed to be doing with low timers. Low timers also need to learn exits, tracking, and canopy control which the tunnel can't prepare them for. Don't get me wrong, if I have somebody in the AFF program who just can't settle down enough for the release dive, I send them to Perris if they can afford it, but that is so they can proceed in the AFF program. I do coached jumps with video debrief for slot and pack job. I want more, good jumpers to jump with, so I work to create them. I won't coach people who don't listen, or who argue with me. My jumps outside of tandem/aff/camera are limited, and that's where I collect my fees. Coaching is "fun jumping" for me, I really like teaching and getting that A card signed off.

Happy landing, Bill! Have a happy and safe boogaloo everybody! JP

Beer! Give it up! Made my day! I wish I was at home, I got some great SkyMonkey shots! What up?!

I've got about a hundred and something jumps on the A2 350. Very sporty. The student can usually get the toggle all the way to their knee if they want to fly aggressively even without any input from me, other than instruction. The lighter toggle pressure makes long days of ten tandems much more doable. All I've ever jumped are the EZ384's and the A2's.

Bill, I wouldn't argue with you about just about anything in skydiving. If Luigi wanted to jump his sub whatever canopy we'd all line up to see it. He can do it. Would we let him do it after we knew he drank beer or smoked a joint? Gosh, I hope not. There are anomolies, I don't thing Greybeard is talking about those, Chris is an example, a fellow member of our fraternity of Skymonkeys. I'm not talking about anomolies either. Just dumb stuff. Crashing. We need people pushing the envelope, but not low time short bus riders.

Yeah, I think so. How can each of us reduce the number of deaths at our own dropzones? Most of the arguments against this, and I know there will be deaths, are because we can't "police" the sport enough, or doing so will take the fun out of it. It's going to be REAL hard at the big DZ's. How about zero "preventable" accidents. What I mean by "preventable" is if somebody's aorta detaches during a hard opening, that's not "preventable", if an in-date reserve fails after being properly deployed, that's not "preventable". I think what greybeard is talking about is canopy collisions and the multitude of "preventable" fatalaties we've had, like the woman who turned on her cypres a thousands something feet below the altiude of her dropzone. I've added that one to the mantra I teach my students now regarding gear checks "Is your cypres on, did you turn it on here, when did you turn it on?" On each of our own dropzones, let's reduce the preventable fatality rate to as close to zero as we can, by doing all we can.

Well, your Thailand example is very extreme, that's a ton of folks sometimes over landing areas they've never seen, etc. (I've only been on something less than half that size, the current 121 way sequential record) But how about at our own DZ's? Nobody died at Byron last year. Our culture is to quickly introduce outselves to new jumpers at the DZ and make them clear on how we do things. And people aren't shy about making others clear on what safety expectations are. So, all politics being local, how do we reduce the fatalaties at our home dropzones to zero? It will be far more challenging at the big DZ's like Perris, Eloy, Z-Hills, etc. So, when somebody shows up at my DZ and I introduce myself to them I ask what their numbers are, their discipline, and about their canopy. I take care of them myself, or if they are jumping a velo 79 (or whatever) and exclusively jump head-down, I point them to deBar or Evan or somebody else who can clue them in. I don't know how much input you had to having the Perris swoop landing area moved away from the main landing area, but I bet that has saved lives. What else can we do to reduce the number of fatalities at our own dropzones to zero? Bring it home. That old thing about "not in my backyard" is usually used when somebody wants something (like a sewage treatment plant) just "not in their back yard" Maybe we can treat this concept the same way. "Nobody dies in my back yard", although I usually think of the landing area as the front yard. Anyhow, nobody dies.